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All educational establishments will be closed in the next two weeks. The question that all those responsible for the sector are now seeking an answer to is another: what happens after these 15 days? The Government does not anticipate scenarios, but the associations of directors and the Confederation of Parents’ Associations (Confap) agree that the return to face-to-face classes should be staggered, giving priority to younger students.
The option taken by the Government was the one that the parents’ representatives had defended in recent days. It is a “good solution to calm down and gain strength”, sums up the president of Confap, Jorge Ascenção. The association’s proposal to the Ministry of Education also aimed at a gradual return of students to schools. A return of all students would be “rushed,” they argue.
The representatives of the managers agree with the idea, anticipating that within two weeks “there will hardly be any sanitary conditions” to return to a situation similar to this week, says Filinto Lima of the National Association of Directors of Public Groups and Schools.
The “ideal” scenario for Confap would be the return of 1st and 2nd cycle students to face-to-face classes from February 8th. The older classmates, from 3rd cycle and secondary education, remain in distance education for some time. If the evolution of the pandemic does not allow it, there will have to be “a new change in the academic calendar”, defends Jorge Ascenção.
The Ministry of Education does not anticipate. At a press conference, Minister Tiago Brandão Rodrigues presented the obvious scenarios: in two weeks, face-to-face classes return or students move on to distance education. The official highlights that there will be no margin in the academic calendar to repeat the solution now found.
The two weeks of rest, which start this Friday, will be compensated with the sacrifice of the Carnival festivities (from February 15 to 17) and a week of Easter holidays, planned for the period between March 24 and April 5 that were already shorter this year. . The remaining days will be added to the end of the academic year, scheduled for June 9 for grades 9, 11 and 12. The final assessment tests in these years of schooling condition changes in the June calendar.
The return of distance education will hardly be avoidable, something that Confap wants to avoid at all costs. “It does not work in pedagogical terms, no matter how much effort the teachers make”, argues Jorge Ascenção. “Teachers don’t have this training and not all students can.”
At the press conference on Thursday, the Minister of Education was asked whether the decision to convert the two weeks of vacation into a vacation would be an acknowledgment that the government did not create the promised conditions for distance secondary education. Tiago Brandão Rodrigues rejected this possibility and gave a tailor-made pedagogical justification: “Nothing has replaced the learning process.”
The Prime Minister even announced, in April, that the academic year would begin with “universal access to the network and equipment for all students in primary and secondary education” ensured, but the Government quickly revised the promise and announced that the Digital School program would be staggered. The Ministry of Education has been complying with this schedule: the first 100,000 computers, preferably intended for students in need of secondary education, were delivered to schools in the 1st period. However, two new purchases were made, raising the equipment already acquired by the supervisory authority to 335 thousand. These computers do not yet have an estimated delivery date to schools.
“The situation is much better than in March,” says Manuel Pereira, of the National Association of School Leaders. And he gives the example of the school he runs, in Sanfins, where the number of students without equipment to take classes remotely fell from 30% to 15% between March last year and now. This director recognizes, however, that not all students will have the ideal conditions for distance education. Either due to lack of computers or Internet access, or because they live in areas where communications are limited.
The National Association of School Directors did not agree with the solution found by the Government. Manuel Pereira considers “a serious mistake” that the two weeks of school closure are “holidays.” The interruption will break “the work rhythm of the students”, who just returned from Christmas break three weeks ago. The association advocated that we move immediately towards teaching disimportance. “Schools have been preparing for such a situation since September.” In many schools, the impacts of the pandemic forced, throughout the first period, to use several solutions: teachers were teaching classes from school to classes that were in confinement; teachers who taught classes from home to classes that were at school, with an accompanying teacher; or classes divided in half, between face-to-face students and other classmates who attend the same class from home.
Fenprof’s general secretary, Mário Nogueira, has a different opinion. The conditions that exist now in schools “are not very different from last year.” Schools “still lack equipment” and most students “do not have digital autonomy.” Nogueira hopes, therefore, that the next two weeks will serve “to do what has not been done until now,” creating the conditions that he now defends are missing.
